What is Communication?

When I was in undergraduate school, I had a professor in the special education department that I felt was an extremely effective communicator, especially with his students. After taking just one of his classes, I searched for more of his classes each semester. I felt I learned much more of the material from his lectures than I did other professors. He made it a point to learn every student’s name, to make eye contact, to listen to everyone’s opinion, and he made it clear that all of his students were to show respect for him and the other students in the classroom. He knew the material and related it to real world situations; he usually had a personal story to help every student understand the concept he was teaching. He answered questions with honest and appropriate answers. He answered emails and phone calls promptly and was always willing to listen to a student’s concerns and offer assistance. He explained confidentiality to all of his students and made it clear that he could not speak to their parents or friends about them.

I teach a class for the local community college and I have tried to use many of his communication techniques with my adult students. I’ve attempted several and have succeeded at most of them. Because I have been teaching so long, I can relate most of the concepts I am teaching to a personal story, or I encourage other students in the class to share their personal stories about the topic. I have learned all of my student’s names and I make eye contact. I listen to what they say before I respond and encourage respect and honesty with all communication. I’ve had three problems. One, I am inefficient at answering emails in a timely fashion because I work another job forty hours a week, I’m in graduate school, and I have a two-year old child. Much of my time is taken up with those things and I often forget to check my email. A second issue is creating a time to listen to my student’s concerns or problems for the same reasons as listed above. A third issue that is difficult for me to achieve is controlling the conversation when the students begin to share their stories. Many times it is difficult to maintain the topic or control of the direction of the lesson. I am hopeful that these kinks will be worked out with more practice of the skills.